(RNS) — Many faith-based refugee agencies have long called for the end of the emergency health rule that allowed the government to quickly expel undocumented immigrants crossing the border.But now that the rule is expiring at 11:59 p.m. Thursday (May 11), those same faith-based refugee agencies are denouncing the replacement rules announced this week by the Biden administration, which they say would basically ban asylum.
Thousands of migrants are amassing at the Mexico-U.S. border as the emergency public health rule, known as Title 42, ends. The rule, put in place by the Trump administration, allowed border patrol to immediately expel anyone trying to enter the country illegally as a way to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Previously, migrants applying for asylum could wait in the country — sometimes for years — until their asylum claims were heard by a judge.)
Now that the pandemic has ended, though, the Biden administration has proposed a package of new rules intended to better manage the surge of migrants at the southern border.
Chief among those new rules is one that rejects asylum claims for most people who cross the border but do not first seek asylum in Mexico. The rule will go into effect Tuesday.
The new asylum rule is …
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